Check Your Facts

I once worked with a young woman who -- for a reason I will never understand -- believed that her best bet for impressing people was to acquaint them with an appalling medical history.  She happily discussed a veritable medical journal's worth of diseases, conditions, syndromes, and complaints she had suffered, all of which were exaggerated if not completely fictitious. 

She was too young to have been in the hospital that many months that many times; and a little better medical knowledge might have given some credence to her claims.  She told me, for instance, that she used to have to wear very thick eyeglasses to correct very bad astigmatism but that it went away by itself.  She also said her sinuses were so bad, she had to have them removed.

The small company we worked for was slowly going bankrupt, and while the owners were out trying to sell the product, she and I were sometimes the only ones in the office.  At those times, she concocted attacks and episodes and spells she hoped would get her out of work.  I don't know why she bothered.  It was nothing to me, since I was not her boss.

One day she pretended to faint.  I heard her hit the floor, but I just ignored it.  Eventually she began to moan softly, which I also ignored, but finally, not wanting to waste a good fall, she called out (very weakly, of course), and I was forced to go into her cube where she appeared to be just coming to.  I looked down at her and said something real compassionate, like, "What the hell's your problem?"

My favorite, though, was the time she thought she had not only figured out a way to get around being late for work, but also how to get the rest of the day off.

We both started at 8:00 o'clock, but on this morning she finally came hobbling into the office at 8:30, bravely bearing up under the horrific pain of some significant injury she had sustained.  She had slipped on ice, she said, and lain in the parking lot for over 30 minutes before she mustered the strength to drag herself into the building. 

I believed she had fallen (her knee was scraped, her stocking torn), but I knew it hadn't occurred more than five minutes before.  She counted on me being on time, as I usually was, but that morning I was late coming to work.  If she had been in the parking lot when I arrived at 8:25, I'd have seen her. 

I didn't call her out on that lie because I had a better idea.  She was convinced she had dislocated her spine, or some such nonsense, and thought she should just go on home.  I, however, insisted that such a serious injury required immediate medical attention, whereupon I called an ambulance, which came and took her away.

And I spent the rest of that day grinning to myself.

Done for now

So, one holiday down.  And traditional it was -- turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, cranberries, pumpkin pie.  I had leftovers for lunch again today.  I might be just about burned out on that too, although there's still plenty left.

There was plenty of football too.  I will probably never surpass, nor even equal, my personal record of having watched nine football games over Thanksgiving weekend in 1976.  But I saw the ones I wanted to see and parts of various others that were interesting.  The Bears lost.  Michigan State won.  The Lions also lost, which is too bad.  I don't care about the Lions, but I wish somebody would beat Green Bay already.

And speaking of America's national pastime (Frank DeFord says it has overtaken baseball), I am tired of hearing football commentators say that a forward pass is "almost intercepted" just because the defensive player who is covering the intended receiver gets a finger on the ball or has it bounce off his shoulder pad or his head.  When the defender has the ball in his hands and drops it, then it is almost intercepted.

Gearing up for the next bunch of holiday events now.  And football games.  I'm tired already.

Anybody have change for a twenty?

A friend just sent me seven coins she brought home from a trip to Hong Kong, which I was glad to get and add to my little collection of oddball coins.

The problem was, I couldn't identify five of them.  There are handy, helpful sites all over the Internet that I use to identify coins, but I couldn't even figure out what denomination these were.  After broadening my search, I discovered they were not from Hong Kong at all but from Japan.

I love researching foreign coins, but sometimes I find one that stumps me.  A few years ago someone gave me a coin she said was from Greece.  I looked up Greek coins and couldn't find one like it, then on closer examination I decided the writing on it was not Greek at all but Cyrillic.

With that determined, I started looking at Russian coins, but that got me nowhere too.  Finally,  I got the bright idea to transliterate the words on the coin.  I found a chart online that showed the Cyrillic alphabet with the Roman equivalent for each letter.

On the reverse of the coin was "20" and then the word СТОТИНКИ.  Just taking each equivalent letter, this came out to be STOTINKI.  I thought to myself, this can't be right -- nobody has money called stotinki.

Well, you know what?  Bulgaria does.  Their unit of currency is the lev, divided into 100 stotinki, which is actually plural -- one is a stotinka.

In American dollars, 20 stotinki is about 14 cents.  Oh, well.  Its real value is that it is my first and only coin from Bulgaria.

A Sunday Birthday

My mother, Elizabeth Anna Weatherford, was born 90 years ago today in Hillsboro, Illinois.  Last year on this date I presented the newspaper announcement of her birth.  That does not seem like a year ago.  Tempus is definitely fugiting.

November 20, 1921, was a Sunday.  She also died on a Sunday (August 15, 1971).  Last month when I was writing about my father's birthday, I checked to see what day of the week October 13 was in 1912, and it was a Sunday too, and he also died on a Sunday (January 22, 1978).

How freaky is it that both my parents were born and died on Sunday?

If this runs in the family, I should be extremely careful on Fridays.

Stop n Shop

Once again this year I am doing my Christmas shopping online.  It's just a matter of pointing and clicking, and I've got a lot of it done already.  It lacks the interpersonal experience of going to the store where you can touch and feel and heft and poke things to see what they really are about.  But it certainly is easier.

When I was a kid, my mother and aunt and I always made one very special Christmas shopping trip to downtown Chicago, which required a bus and an elevated train to reach.  It was usually within close range of Christmas, so it was cold and often snowy, and the Loop was in full festive decoration, and the stores were busy, the sidewalks crowded.  We would hit all the big department stores -- Wieboldt's and Carson's and The Fair -- and no trip was complete without a visit to Marshall Field's to see the famous Christmas tree that was four -- or was it five? -- stories tall.

During one such shopping trip just about in the middle of the 1950's, we were in Field's taking the elevator up to the seventh floor where the ladies' lounge was.  It stopped along the way and one woman got on.  Unlike every other woman in the elevator and in the store and in the Loop, she was wearing slacks.  Even I at age nine or ten noticed it, since shopping (or  just being) downtown in Chicago was a dress-up affair.  She got off on the next floor, and the second the doors had closed behind her, a woman turned to her companion and said with disdain, "Hmmp!  I wonder what suburb she's from."

We were from the suburbs too by then, but luckily we knew how to behave.

I wonder what that women would think of me sitting in my jammies pointing and clicking my way to Christmas shopping success.

But he didn't come to dinner after all

I was flipping channels earlier and came across "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," the 1967 film that is probably considered a classic if for no other reason than it was the last of the Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn flicks, and, in fact, Tracy's last film.  It was a bit touchy in its day, all about inter-racial marriage, or the prospect thereof, between Katharine Houghton -- Hepburn's niece, who never did much else in the movies -- and Sidney Poitier, who did.  Good movie, though, with a great cast, including Cecil Kellaway as a lovable teddy bear.  Beah Richards as Poitier's mother is especially wonderful, but she always is.

I remember when my parents came home from having gone to see the movie, which I had already seen.  We talked about it -- the Tracy- Hepburn end-of-an-era thing, how old and near-death Spencer Tracy looked.  But with regard  to the social and familial implications of the story, I said to my mother, "So, how would you feel about it if I brought home a young man I wanted to marry who was black?"

She ruminated on that for about three seconds and then said, "Well, if he looks like Sidney Poitier, that'll be all right."

Da Bears and Binny's

Bears games are not on television in mid-Michigan very often, unless it's a Sunday- or Monday-night telecast or they are playing Detroit.  Yesterday they did play the Lions in Chicago, so I got to see that one.  It was a good game, which da Bears won handily (37-13) and in which Devin Hester set an all-time NFL record for the most punts returned for touchdowns (12). 

My mother had a good friend named Ruth who was a big Bears fan.  Football teams can black out telecasts of home games in the local market if they aren't sold out, and back in the 1960's and 70's that happened quite a bit to the Bears.  But that didn't stop Ruth.  On those Sundays, she and her husband and mother and brother Hank and his wife would all pile into the car and drive northwest toward Rockford to a motel that was the required 75 miles from Chicago.  They rented a room for the afternoon and watched the game on the TV there.

When I can't see the Bears on television, I listen to the games on WBBM radio from Chicago, which I can stream on my computer.  It's not the same, of course, but at least I know what's going on when it's going on. 

A fringe benefit of the radio show from Chicago is the homey little ads they read.  My favorite is the one for a liquor store called Binny's Beverage Depot, which always ends with, "If you can't find it at Binny's Beverage Depot, it's probably not worth drinkin'."

A-men, brother.

11-11-11

Nobody could expect me to let today's date go by without comment.  I have been noticing and pointing out to others such funky dates ever since 5-5-55.

But today's date has a unique double-digit-ness that makes it way cooler than 10-10-10 was or 12-12-12 is going to be.

It is not only in dates that I've always appreciated ones and/or elevens.  For many years -- probably ever since I owned my first digital clock -- whenever I notice the time is 11:11, I always say out loud, "One one one one."  I'm not sure why I do that.  Possibly I just like ones.  Maybe because I was born on 11-1.  Or maybe because I myself am so singular.

So, this morning -- at eleven minutes after eleven o'clock, I should say, "One one one one one one one one one one."  I don't think I will, actually, but I will try to mark the time by pausing at that hour to remember all who have served our country in war and in peace, especially all those men and women who are still in harm's way today and whom I would like to see come home in one piece very soon.

How about Frosty Chicken?

Remember Cold Duck?  Maybe not, if you're under 40.  It was all the rage in the early 1970's.  The best-known brand was Andre, made by Gallo, and I have just discovered, by calling my favorite wine merchant, that it is still available at $5.89 a bottle.  This stuff is right up there with Mad Dog 20/20.

The story is that in Bavaria long ago they mixed red wine with left-over champagne, so as not to waste it, and called this concoction Kaltes Ende (German for "cold end"), which somebody later punned into Kaltes Ente, which means "cold duck."  Some dude in Detroit started marketing the stuff in America in 1939.  Apparently it is still made by mixing sparkling wine with red wine.  As far as I can remember, it tastes rather like carbonated cough medicine.

I got to thinking about this yesterday when I saw a Paula Deen show on which she roasted a duck.  It reminded me of the time my mother was in the hospital, long about 1971 it would have been.  One evening when I went to visit her, she told me she had overheard the strangest conversation between two nurses who were standing in the hallway just outside her room.  They were talking about some get-together they were going to that night, and one of them said, "I'm going to bring Cold Duck."  The second nurse said, "Oh, that's great!  I love Cold Duck!"

My mother wrinkled up her nose and said, "Why would they want to have cold duck?  I don't even like duck hot."

Miller's Wedding

I was planning to attend the wedding of a college friend named Sue Miller, whom we never called anything but Miller.  It was February of 1970, I believe, in the small town of Columbus, Wisconsin.  It was about a three-hour drive from where I lived near Chicago, and I decided to drive up the day of the wedding, a Saturday.  Miller's parents had generously invited me, among a number of other out-of-town guests, to spend Saturday night at their house.

I was dressed for the occasion in my powder-blue imported Italian knit suit.  I wore black pumps with three-inch heels and carried a black satin envelope bag that was barely big enough to hold my wallet and a pack of cigarettes.  Having nothing elegant enough of my own to go with this outfit, I borrowed my mother's champagne-colored Borgana coat with the shawl-collar-wrap-around front.  Its wide, rolled-up sleeves were three-quarter length, so long, cream-colored gloves finished me off.

The wedding was at 2:00, and I got to Columbus about noon.  I drove around the little town a while, not finding the church, and finally pulled into the parking lot of a little cafe along the main highway.  I think it might actually have had a sign that said "EAT."

I went in and took a booth.  Two booths away was a quartet of teenagers, the only other patrons in the place.  A phlegmatic young woman took my order for a grilled cheese sandwich, and while it was being prepared, I availed myself of the restroom.  When my lunch arrived, I asked the young waitress if she could direct me to St. Jerome's Church.

"That's a Catholic church," she said, eyeing me suspiciously.  I replied that I knew that, and then she said, "There's a wedding there today," as if warning me to stay away.  I wanted to ask her where the hell she thought I was going in my powder-blue imported Italian knit suit and my mother's champagne-colored Borgana coat, and long, cream-colored gloves with my black envelope bag.  But I resisted and simply asked her again if she knew where the church was.  She replied, "I know where it is, but I can't tell you how to get there."

Just then one of the young people in the other booth called out, "Do you want to go to St. Jerome's?"  Why the hell do you think I was asking about it? I wanted to say, but I resisted, and I was given the following directions.  "Go that way," he said, pointing out the window, "and turn right at the first street.  Then go to the four corners, turn left, and keep going until you get to the big white house where Smith's used to live, then turn right.  You'll see it."

Of course, I wanted to say, How the hell am I supposed to know where the Smith's used to live? but I didn't.  I thanked him, finished my sandwich, and left.  I found the church, and the rest went off without any hitches that I remember, at least until the next day.

After the reception I had followed several cars to the Millers' house.  It was dark, and I had absolutely no idea where I was going.  In the morning, I found my way down to the kitchen where Mrs. Miller was making a huge, wonderful breakfast for everyone.  She asked me what I'd like to drink, and I said, "Do you have milk?"

"Do I have milk?" she repeated, as if she'd never heard anything so stupid.  "Honey, you're on a dairy farm." 

Obviously I have fond memories of that trip, especially the moment when I bid farewell to the Millers and their guests.  I had taken a change of clothes, of course, but I had forgotten to bring a jacket, so I walked out to my car with as much dignity as I could muster wearing jeans, sweatshirt, sneakers, and my mother's champagne-colored Borgana coat.

Pulchritude in November

It is a dreary day.  It is dark and rainy and windy and cold and, well, November.

There is a poem by Robert Frost called "My November Guest" that keeps coming to me.  In it he personifies sorrow (specifically, in fact, his own, for he calls her "my sorrow") as a woman who sees remarkable beauty in "these dark days of autumn rain."  She thinks he doesn't appreciate what she sees, but he confides in us that he has long known "The love of bare November days / Before the coming of the snow" but hasn't admitted it to her because he likes to hear her praise "The desolate, deserted trees, / The faded earth, the heavy sky." 

I have always liked that poem very much, but when I look outside today I am having a hard time seeing anything as beautiful as he claims to have seen.  Of course, he had his sorrow with him, so perhaps I am just not sad enough today.  A couple more days of this kind of weather, however, and I should be so depressed that the view out my window will appear to be the single most gorgeous thing I've ever seen in my life.

Tony's Cat

I used to know a guy named Tony.  An actor, was Tony, when he could get parts in local theater; a community arts coordinator the rest of the time.

Tony had a gorgeous cat, a big, long-haired Persian or Angora or similar breed, with very long, luxurious white fur, smallish ears, and blue eyes.  Like many white-haired, blue-eyed cats, it was deaf.  The first time I saw this cat, I was stunned at how regal and elegant it looked.  I asked what its name was, and Tony told me the cat was called Larry.

I said that was a horrible name for such a spectacular cat.  Tony said he hadn't named the cat, the people he got the cat from had.  I suggested he change its name to something mysterious and Oriental, but Tony said no, he was sure it was too late -- the cat was used to its name.

To which I replied, "He's DEAF!!  He's never heard his name."

Tony remained unconvinced.  Larry didn't seem to notice we were talking about him.

That's just wrong, and on my birthday too

Just as I predicted, today is my birthday.  I was born on Friday, November 1, 1946, at West Suburban Hospital in Oak Park, Illinois.  I arrived at 11:45 a.m., just in time for lunch.

The hospital bill, which has been kept all these years in The Box (see October 20 posting), lists all charges for the delivery as well as care for mother and baby for six and a half days, and it shows the total amount due of $88.30.

Have healthcare costs gone completely insane?  Yes.  There is something real wrong here.   Okay, it was 65 years ago, so to put it in perspective, I ran it through an inflation calculator available online from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  That hospital stay would cost $1,027 today.

Is there today a hospital where you can have a baby for which the bill will be just over a thousand dollars?  I don't think so.  Besides that, where can you even find a hospital that will let mother and baby stay a week?

It makes that 88 bucks seem like quite a bargain.  I'd like to think I was worth every cent.